No one can move that mountain,
Grain by grain as she says the chickens move sand dunes and
Move them back again like prisoners.
Deaf old men on the phone with the offices of cross purposes,
My failing powers taking up a little more space in the morning,
In the push of so many lives behind me,
Couldn’t we, shouldn’t we talk of something else like
Praises sung to God on the road?

Forever fresh, the morning illumines for all above and below.
The rows of the plains or the cans in the alley,
Illumines for the berry sight,
The carrot snug orange in the dark ground.
Be it foreground, background,
All ground for being a part of being which plays its part
Loud or silent, brass or timpani, grass or grain,
Flour and water for batter and bread.

Starlight at night when the clump of cloud drift clears paths
Well beyond our space as space itself present, sense
Of tense imploring an immediate and vast present,
Contingent but also lasting ever and further around
As the eye with a clever telescope harkens to beat death
With the work around of vision and
On the great shoulders of our ancestors figuring,
To make the sense a peace,
The play of force less gross for us,
Seeming to suffer of whims and caprice and each other.

By Rolf Stavig,

9/27/22